by Lake, Thalia
When Johnny Jr. was ten and Michael was seven my father decided to introduce them to his longtime mistress, Sharon. She literally lived around the corner from us and worked as a beautician at a shop that was just a few blocks away. Johnny Jr. was so traumatized by our father’s betrayal of our mother and felt so guilty for having seen our father’s mistress that he told our mother about it. Johnny Jr. was a mama’s boy. He loved her like no other, and he hated that he couldn’t protect her or take up for her when our father talked down to her and called her names. He wanted our father gone so he could take care of our mother and make her happy instead of seeing her cry all the time.
Once again, our mother was devastated upon hearing news of her husband’s constant infidelity. It was one thing when she dealt with these women on her own, but to bring her children into this mess? This was unacceptable to her. That day she went into a full on rage. She cried, she broke things, she chased our father around the house with a pot of hot, boiling grease. It was sheer chaos. She chased our father all through the house hitting, slapping and punching him whenever she got her hands on him. When she finally tired herself out, our father began with his lies.
“Betty Jean you know you can’t believe anything Johnny Jr. says! He’s mad because he wanted a toy and I told him no, so he’s making up these lies about me. I never took him or Michael to no woman’s house, and I never gave her a ride home. I don’t know where these boys are getting these lies from, but I would never do anything like that!” Looking at his two boys with a deadly scowl on his face, Johnny Sr. continued. “Let me deal with these two for lying like this and getting you all upset.” Turning to his two sons he said through gritted teeth, “I’m gonna beat the shit out of you two! Get to the basement and wait for me!”
Johnny Jr. and Michael were crying and shaking in fear. Michael almost peed his pants he was so afraid. Their father was mean and sadistic and they knew it. They knew they were going to get the worst beating of their life this time, and our mother wasn’t going to do a thing to stop it. Johnny Paris, Sr. put on his steel toe work boots, grabbed his thick leather belt, and went down the basement to deal with his lying sons—only he knew they weren’t lying.
The beating he gave them was one of the worst beatings they’d ever endured at the hands of our father. When he got done Junior needed stitches in his head. Unfortunately, this became a regular occurrence in our home. Johnny Paris, Sr. was king. He was free to do as he pleased as long as it didn’t affect our mother. He had free range to beat and verbally attack the entire house. He had license to terrorize his children whenever the mood hit him. In private our mother would tell us, “Well, he’s your father. You know how he is. Just do what you’re told, it’ll blow over.” Or we’d hear: “I know he’s lying, but I don’t want to be put in the middle and have to choose between y’all and your daddy.” To be told in so many words as a child that your mother would always believe your father over you no matter what was devastating. It made all of us feel like we were stuck, that we didn’t matter. We had no support, no protection from the tyrant that made our lives a living hell on a daily basis. The one person who should have protected us at all costs didn’t.
Chapter Four - The Unthinkable
Sarah was now in high school and she was having a rough time with the girls because they were jealous of her. Sarah was short, light-skinned with the same brick house shape as our mother: small waist, big breasts and big booty. She was also very pretty. The other problem was Sarah liked to mess with other girl’s boyfriends, which always had her in fights. Sarah loved the satisfaction of taking someone’s boyfriend away from them, and she loved the attention.
She craved and needed attention at all times and at all costs. It wasn’t long before Sarah began sneaking around with boys at school and the neighborhood boys as well. She was a hoe and we all knew it. She’d come home from school with hickies on her neck and suffer through beatings from our mother, but the beatings didn’t stop Sarah from doing what she wanted to do.
My sister Carly, was the straight A student who did everything right. She was the most dependable of all of us kids, the one who was too scared to sneak and do bad things, the one who always did what our parents asked. She hated cooking but was a great cleaner and a neat freak just like our mother. Carly was also timid and meek, something a disgusting pedophile would prey on.
Our mother worked third shift and our father worked first shift most of our lives to keep from having to pay for daycare or babysitters. When it was time for my mother to go to work we would already be in the bed or getting ready for bed. Our bedrooms were upstairs and our parents’ bedroom was downstairs. In the middle of the night our father would come upstairs and get Carly out of bed and tell her to come down stairs. She had just turned thirteen years old when our father began molesting her.
“If you ever tell your mama or your brother or sisters, I will kill you and the rest of them. Nobody would ever believe your scary ass anyway, especially your mama. She believes everything I tell her.”
Carly would lay there and cry, gagging on her own vomit as her father raped her again and again. This went on for two years until one day Carly couldn’t take it anymore. She was afraid that she was pregnant, and since her periods were irregular, she couldn’t be sure. The night the truth came out is a night I’ll never forget.
“Mama, I need to talk to you about something, and it’s serious,” Carly said to our mother, who was sitting at the dining room table reading her bible. Carly led our mother to the basement so they could talk in private since our father was in our parents’ bedroom watching an old western.
“What is it Carly?” Betty Jean asked, with a worried look on her face.
“I have to tell you something, I have to get this off of my chest because it’s wrong and it’s killing me and I’m scared for Sloane, he can’t touch Sloane!” Carly said, through anguished tears. Now our mother was frantic with worry.
“Girl what are you talking about? Who can’t touch Sloane? What happened?”
“It’s daddy mama. H...he’s been forcing me to have sex with him at night when you go to work. For two years he’s been doing this to me,” Carly sobbed.
Betty Jean Paris felt like someone punched her in the guts and knocked all the air out of her body. She crumbled to her knees and cried. “No! No! Nooooo! Not again, not to my own child!” she wailed. Carly kneeled down next to her distraught mother and hugged her “He said if I ever told he’d kill you and everybody else. He said that no one would ever believe me, that you would never believe me because you believe everything he says, but I’m not lying mama. I would never lie about something like this.”
Betty Jean knew Carly was telling the truth. Out of all of her kids Carly was the most honest and she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Carly had all of our mother’s good qualities while Sarah had all of our mother’s bad qualities. I was simply an odd ball. I fell somewhere in the middle.
Betty Jean knew that the right thing had to be done. No matter how much she loved Johnny Paris, this was not something one of his smooth lies could make right. After questioning Carly and getting all the facts she needed, Betty Jean hugged her daughter, dried both of their tears, and sent Carly to her room, so that she could confront her husband.
Walking into her bedroom where her husband laid comfortably chuckling to the movie he was watching, Betty Jean stood in front of the bed. “How could you do this? How could you have sex with your own daughter? What kind of sick bastard are you?”
Johnny’s eyes widened in shock. His biggest nightmare had come true. ‘That lying bitch told.’ He thought to himself. Instead of admitting to what he had done, he resorted to doing what he did best: lying.
“Betty Jean, I don’t know what Carly told you but she’s lying. That girl would always get up in the middle of the night asking if she could sleep in our bed because she had a nightmare or something. I told her she was too big for that and then she’d start crying so I let her sleep in here with me. That was it; nothin
g else happened. That girl is lying! All these kids do is lie on me!”
Betty Jean wanted to throw up. Her husband sat there and lied to her in her face. There were many things she took off of Johnny Paris, his constant cheating, beating the shit out of her sons, but having sex with their own daughter….she couldn’t take it. She’d been in Carly’s shoes before, only her mother didn’t believe her. But Betty Jean believed Carly.
“I wasn’t enough for you? I let you fuck me every which way you wanted to, would hang upside down if you asked me to, and that simply wasn’t enough was it? You’ve had side bitches for years that I’ve put up with, and you still had to resort to having sex with our daughter?” Betty Jean yelled through tears.
“Betty Jean listen to me! She’s lying! That girl is how old? Fifteen or sixteen?” Johnny asked, as he jumped out of bed and scrambled to put some pants on.
She’s fifteen you dumb ass!” Betty Jean yelled.
“Okay, okay, she’s fifteen years old. She should know better right? What fifteen year old let’s her father do this to her unless she wanted it?”
“You started RAPING her when she turned thirteen! She was a child then and she’s a child now! It makes no difference, YOU were the adult in the situation and she was the child! I’m calling the police. I want you out of this house NOW!”
With that our mother stormed to the kitchen and called to the police with our father begging and pleading with her in the background.
While upstairs, we were all crying and trying to understand what was happening. Carly did her best to explain it to me and Michael, but Evan was much too young to understand. Johnny Jr. and Michael wanted to kill our father. Sarah was simply distraught. She couldn’t stop crying for her sister.
“The good thing is I’m not pregnant,” Carly explained. “I was scared at one point that I was.” That was too much for any of us to wrap our heads around. As if our family life wasn’t already a nightmare, hearing that your sister was being molested under your very noses was too much to take. We all felt like we were in some bad dream. Our already horrible life had just gotten worse.
When the police arrived, they questioned my mother, Carly, and subsequently, our father, who admitted to molesting Carly. He was immediately arrested upon his confession. They took him away in handcuffs as he cried, “Betty Jean I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” What was missing was his apology to Carly.
They made me, Michael and Evan stay upstairs in our room with the door closed the entire time, but we sat at the edge of the stairs to eavesdrop as much as we could. Our mother called her pastor to the house to pray over us and to get guidance. He didn’t know what to tell her because he never dealt with something like this before.
“Sister Paris, you’ve already taken the most important step, and that’s getting him out of the house and away from your kids, your other two girls in particular. You might want to find a lawyer too because you definitely have grounds for divorce,” Pastor Whitmore said, in a serious tone.
‘Divorce? Who said anything about divorce? I still want my husband back once he’s rehabilitated.’ Betty Jean thought to herself.
“Thank you for coming by Pastor Whitmore. I appreciate your prayers and sound advice,” Betty Jean said, as she walked him to do the front door, ushering him out.
“Oh, you’re welcome sister Paris. If there’s anything else you need please don’t hesitate to call. My wife and I can even take the kids off your hands while you take care of business or make an appointment with a lawyer,” he said, with a pointed stare.
“Thank you for the offer Pastor, I’ll be sure to let you know.” With that, Betty Jean closed the door and turned off the lights in the living and dining room before heading upstairs to check on her children.
As she suspected, they were still awake and visibly upset and confused, especially Johnny Jr. and Michael. “Get up boys and come to the girl’s room,” she instructed. They all walked into our room and sat on our beds.
“A lot has happened tonight, a lot of bad things. Your father was taken to jail for doing something that no parent and no grown up should ever do to a child. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to protect you Carly. I’m sorry I haven’t protected any of you kids the way a mother should.” She then broke down crying which made the rest of us cry.
“Your father needs help, and until he gets that help he will not be able to come home.”
“You mean to tell me you’re gonna take him back? How could you mama?” Johnny Jr. asked in disgust. “After everything he’s done to our family you’re taking him back? You don’t need him, WE don’t need him!”
“Junior, everyone deserves forgiveness, it’s what the bible says.”
We all looked at our mother as if she grew a second head out of her neck. The man she called her husband, who was also unfortunately our father, was a lying, cheating, sociopath. He couldn’t be trusted and he certainly didn’t deserve forgiveness. Not in our eyes. Our mother was so used to his abuse that she couldn’t see things from our perspective. She was too selfish to put herself in our shoes to see how much we suffered mentally and physically at the hands of this monster. It was easy for her because he knew when he messed up all he had to do was buy her a new car or some expensive kitchen appliance and she’d forgive him. When he abused us nothing happened. It was always our fault, we should have stayed out of his way and not provoke him.
Our mother was too blind to see that her two oldest boys were eaten up with hatred for their father. They wanted him dead. We all did. In addition to beating them senseless, another form of punishment he liked to inflict upon my brothers was to not buy them new clothes or shoes. He’d let them go to school in clothes and shoes that were ripped and too small, even in the winter time, as punishment. He didn’t care that this caused them to get into more fights at school because of constant teasing and ridicule. Michael became so desperate for clothes that he resorted to wearing my jeans. The night before school he’d be in the basement sewing up the holes in his pants and coloring in the faded spots with blue crayons or markers. He’d also squeeze into Evan’s shirts just so he’d have something different to wear to school and not be mocked for wearing the same thing every day. Just imagine how it felt to live in the same house where your brothers were being treated so horribly but you and your sisters were still getting new clothes and shoes. I hated it. It was awful emotional abuse, and I hated seeing my brothers suffer the way they did. We all were all powerless to do anything about it.
“He doesn’t deserve forgiveness mama, and I’ll never forgive him,” Junior said, before getting up and walking back to his room to go to bed. The rest of us silently agreed with him even though we didn’t say anything. We’ve had these conversations with our mother so many times before, making our feelings known to her about our father only to hear her say, “He’s your father, you have to respect your father. God will take care of him if he’s doing wrong.”
It was like we lived in a different universe than our mother. If he was doing wrong? The man hasn’t done right by you since the day you met him, and he hasn’t done right by us since we were born!
“Y’all go to bed too. We’re going to get through this, I promise. Everything will work out just like it should, God willing.”
With those parting words our mother got up and went back down stairs. As always, she used the bible when it seemed to fit her situation instead of following the bible in every aspect of her life. If she truly listened to the bible she would have divorced her cheating husband years ago. If she truly listened to the bible she would have never allowed her husband to viciously beat her sons, busting their heads with his steel toe work boots or beating them until they defecated on themselves.
Before we went to bed, Michael and I both had to use the bathroom. We walked down the carpeted stairs slowly and quietly. The bathroom was next to our parent’s bedroom, and the bedroom door was closed. We heard our mother sobbing and mumbling something to someone on the phone. When she finally got her sobbing under contro
l we heard her say, “I love him Faye, what am I going to do without him? I want him back home as soon as possible!” There was a pause in the conversation as aunt Faye was speaking.
“I know Faye, and I know you’re saying that because you never liked Johnny just like the rest of the family never liked him, but why did Carly wait so long to say anything? She was old enough to know better! I done told her about walking around the house in those too little shorts. She enticed Johnny!”
Michael and I couldn’t believe our ears and looked at each other in total shock. This was when we knew that our mother was sick in the head when it came to our father. Their sick and twisted version of love was just that - sick and twisted. There was nothing either could do to the other that would make them leave each other. Not even molesting your own child.
Chapter Five - Temporary Peace
Over the next few weeks our mother and Carly had meetings with lawyers, family court dates, and mandatory counseling with a psychiatrist for Carly. Our father was required to spend six months in a halfway house to undergo counseling and treatment for molesting our sister and his secret drug habit. He told the judge that it was the drugs that made him do something so vile and uncharacteristic. His drugs of choice: cocaine in any form and weed. Our father was a weekend drinker, but over the years we all noticed how he began to drink more, and not just on the weekends. His behavior also became more volatile. None of us kids thought about drugs being an issue, but we were kids so why would we?
We enjoyed life without our father. For once we were happy and felt free to be ourselves. We laughed openly and had fun with each other. For the first time ever, we were able to relax and breathe easy. Our walks home from the bus stop weren’t full of dread, and dinner was enjoyable. The evil tyrant was gone and we loved it, but our mother was miserable. She acted as though her life had ended, and in her mind it had. Having peace in her house for the first time in years without her crazed husband calling her and her kids stupid, ugly, dumb and constantly going on rampages wasn’t enough for her. Having the love and attention of her kids wasn’t enough. We doted on her morning noon and night; keeping the house clean, cooking, massaging and scrubbing her sore feet after she came home from work, making her laugh - but it wasn’t enough.
